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Updated: Aug 20, 2026

Orientational Transition in a Liquid Crystal Triggered by the Thermodynamic Growth of Interfacial Wetting Sheets
Published on: May 15, 2017
Structures and phase transitions in thin free standing films of an antiferroelectric liquid crystal
Abstract:
The premises of a discrete mean-field model for polar smectic liquid crystals are tested by analyzing the ellipsometric experiments on two, three, and four-layer freestanding films of MHPOBC. The measured temperature dependences of the ellipsometric parameters in a weak dc external field are compared to the predictions of a simple clock model. A very good quantitative agreement is found indicating an odd-even effect: XY structures are stable for odd and Ising-like structures for an even number of layers.
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